Opinion - Leader Page Articles   

EU gives Turkey the cold shoulder again

Vaiju Naravane

Turkey has been knocking at Europe's door since 1959. Now Turks are getting frustrated with what they see as undue humiliation, with a constant shifting of goalposts.

THE YEAR is ending badly for Turkey. On December 11, the European Union decided to slow down Ankara's membership talks by suspending negotiations on eight of the 35 policy areas or chapters. Turkey was being punished for its refusal to open ports and airports to traffic from Cyprus, a full EU member.

Turkey said it would not do so unless the EU honoured its commitment to end the economic isolation of the island's Turkish north, but then unexpectedly offered an olive branch saying it would open one port and one airport as a token gesture.

That was clearly not enough for Turkey baiters within the EU. Cyprus, Greece, France, Austria, Denmark, and the Netherlands who are fundamentally opposed to Turkish membership of the European Club called for harsher punishment, ultimatums, and deadlines, but supporters of Ankara such as Britain and Sweden blocked those calls. What emerges was the compromise to freeze talks on chapters concerning trade, transport, financial services, and agriculture.

The Greek Cypriot government that controls the southern two-thirds of Cyprus is internationally recognised as having sovereignty over the entire island. But it does not control the north; for in 1974, following a Greek-backed coup attempt, Turkey invaded the island and in 1983 established the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus that no one but Ankara recognises.

Recognition of Cyprus has become the latest in a series of sticking points in Turkey's EU accession talks. Turks feel betrayed by the EU's backing to Cyprus. Two years ago, Ankara used all its influence with Turkish Cypriot leaders in order to secure approval for Kofi Anan's 2004 UN plan for reuniting the island. The EU admitted Cyprus despite the fact that Greek Cypriots rejected the plan. This has given Cyprus an effective veto to Turkey's entry into the EU.

Journalist and commentator Geoffrey Wheatcroft writing in The Guardian said: "Turkey has a much better case over Cyprus than in other matters, and the despicable behaviour of the Greek Cypriot government — and electorate, when they voted against reunification of the island once EU membership could not be revoked — has made Cyprus the least loved member state of the EU."

Turkey's Foreign Minister and Vice Prime Minister Abdullah Gul called the EU punitive measure "an injustice" and asked whether Europe was "really aware of the consequences of not sustaining the accession process at a time when a modern and prosperous Turkey is becoming increasingly relevant to the well-being of the European Union and beyond."

Mr. Gul's statements reflected Turkish anger at what they see as Europe's ambivalence, indecisiveness, growing Islamophobia, and some say outright duplicity. "Whatever we do, they will never be happy. We have made changes to our penal code and several other laws to bring Turkey in line with EU requirements. It is never enough. The French tried to make our entry conditional to an official recognition of the so-called genocide of Armenians in 1915 — they, who have done incalculable harm to their colonies and still have trouble admitting to their massacres in Algeria and elsewhere. Essentially we frighten the Europeans and they don't want us. Especially after 9/11, anything to do with Islam has become a no-no. We are 70 million, 98 per cent Muslim and we terrify them. Europe has become a Christian Club. That is the long and short of it," Turkish journalist Mehamet Ali told this correspondent.

Enthusiasm for EU membership has fallen sharply in recent years dropping from nearly 68 per cent in 2004 to just below 58 per cent last year. Turks are getting frustrated with what they see as undue humiliation, with a constant shifting of goalposts. A strong majority feels Turkey is being unfairly treated by the Europeans.

Turkey has been knocking at Europe's doors since 1959 when it first applied for associate membership of the then European Economic Community. Every other country that applied after Turkey has overtaken it, including Romania, Bulgaria, and Croatia. It now appears that Turkey might not make it at all, at least not for another two decades.

Several arguments are heard within the EU against Turkish entry. That the Turks are "culturally different"; that waves of Turkish immigrants will flood the continent; that Turkey's size and population will unduly dominate the EU; that its poverty will prove a major financial burden; that it has an overwhelming Muslim majority.

Those in favour of Turkish accession say the country will become a bridge between East and West; that anchoring it within the EU will keep Islamic nationalists at bay; that it will be a conduit to the gas and petroleum reserves in Central Asia; its young and increasingly well-educated population will correct the demographic imbalance within Europe. Tony Blair, who supports Turkey, warned that "it would be a very big long-term strategic mistake for Europe to turn its back on Turkey."

A peculiar paradox is at work in Turkey. The election by a crushing majority of the conservative Islamic AK (Justice and Development) Party in 2002 sent shock waves across Europe, which feared Turkey would give in to the temptation of Islamic fundamentalism. But to their surprise the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the former Mayor of Istanbul, has moved forward slowly but steadily with reforms that included ending the death penalty, allowing education and broadcasts in Kurdish, ending penalties for criticising state institutions, easing restrictions on public demonstrations, tightening measures against illegal immigration, and instituting greater freedom for non-Muslim minorities.

Within Turkey itself, there has been huge opposition to integration with the EU, most of it coming from those who have a vested interest in the continuation of a state where the army has huge powers conferred on it by the country's constitution.

Although Turkey is described as a modern secular state, founded by the nationalist leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, "the ideological blueprint of the Turkish project was shaped by the fascist era," says Neils Kadritzke, editor with the German version of Le Monde Diplomatique. He says the Kemalist invention of a nation was embedded in a war of national liberation against the Greek invasion of Izmir in May 1919 following the break-up of the Ottoman Empire and the treaty of Sevres. "In order to create `proud Turks' from a nationalistically indifferent Muslim population, a combination of social mobilisation, compulsory education, and the forcible elimination of particular identities was required. But Turkish society has by no means been fundamentally and irreversibly `Europeanised' as the Kemalist ideologues claim," he says.

Ataturk's legacy

Ataturk did indeed introduce a programme of "westernisation" and accomplish important reforms — the abolition of the caliphate and the neutralisation of religion through the state. But a paternalistic dictatorship of education seldom leads to democratic conditions. Nor did Ataturk ever define himself as a "democrat": the combination of "statism" and "nationalism" left no room for the fundamental Western idea that state and nation should serve the development of the individual, not the other way around. As such, the circumstances in which Kemalism was born constitute a handicap that has prevented fully democratic conditions from flourishing in Turkey to this day, Mr. Kadritzke wrote in an article entitled "Turks at the Gate of Brussels."

He says this explains why Mr. Erdogan who heads an Islamist government has been able to inject more democratic reforms as required by the EU. It also explains why some of the bitterest opponents of the process of democratisation are hardcore Kemalists. "Their positions of power are in bureaucratic institutions, in the judiciary, and in the military; their most effective instrument is the `deep state' which crystallises around MIT, the secret service controlled by the military." The Erdogan Government has obviously set in motion forces that are bound to transform Turkey whether it ultimately wins accession or not.

While the EU views Turkey as being essentially Asian and Muslim, Turkey views itself as being essentially European, part of the Europe of ideas. Straddling two continents, the country responds to a dual identity. Nobel Prize winning Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk also speaks of this Turkish duality. "Ninety-five per cent of Turks carry two spirits in themselves. International observers think there are the good guys — seculars, democrats, liberals — and the bad guys — nationalists, political Islamists, conservatives, pro-statists. No. In the average Turk, these two tendencies live together all the time. Every person is fighting within himself or herself, in a way. Or maybe, very naively, carrying self-contradictory ideas."

And how should Europe deal with this sometimes conflicting duality? Denis Mac Shane, Mr. Blair's former Europe Minister, has the answer: "For the first time since Ataturk you have a real momentum for modernisation, democratisation and economic reform in Turkey. Istanbul is one of the cradles of European cultures and civilisation. Turkey itself has got one foot in Europe and one in Asia. The question is do we want it to live under European norms and laws or tell it to go off and imitate the worst performance of its neighbours?"

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Impasse in Assam
Renewed focus on agriculture
EU gives Turkey the cold shoulder again
Abe and Japan's quest for a new identity
2,000 years on, it's still a good idea
Why, when, how?
Intolerance
High Court verdict
Warne to retire

Copyright © 2006, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu